Senate Democrats Demand Investigation Into Voter Fraud Group

Claim True the Vote is unnecessarily intimidating voters

Ohio Senate Democrats sent a letter to Ohio Secretary of
State Jon Husted and Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine on Wednesday asking them
to investigate True the Vote (TTV), a Tea Party group established to
combat alleged voter fraud. The Democrats claim TTV is unnecessarily
intimidating voters.

In the letter, the Democrats say they would find voter
fraud to be a serious problem if it was happening, but they also note
recent studies have found no evidence of widespread voter impersonation fraud. An Oct. 4
Government Accountability Office study could not document a single case
of voter impersonation fraud. A similar study by News21, a Carnegie-Knight
investigative reporting project, found a total of 10 cases of alleged
in-person voter impersonation since 2000. That’s less than one case a
year.

Tim Burke, chairman of both the Hamilton County Board of
Elections and the Hamilton County Democratic Party, says the faulty
voter registration forms, which groups like TTV typically cite as
examples of in-person voter fraud, never amount to real voter fraud.

“Those nonexistent voters never show up to vote,” he says.
“(The forms) were put together by people working on voter registration drives.
Frankly, the intent wasn’t to defraud the board of elections; the
intent was to defraud their employer into making them think they’re
doing more work.”

In other words, people aren't submitting faulty voter registration forms to skew elections; registration drive employees are submitting the forms to try to keep their jobs.

To combat the seemingly nonexistent problem of voter
impersonation fraud, TTV is planning on recruiting one million poll
watchers — people that will stand by polling places to ensure the voting
process is legitimate.

The Democrats insist some of the tactics
promoted by the group are illegal. The letter claims it’s illegal for
anyone but election officials to inhibit the voting process in any way.
Most notably, Ohio law prohibits “loiter[ing] in or
about a registration or polling place during registration or the casting
and counting of ballots so as to hinder, delay, or interfere with the
conduct of the registration or election,” according to the letter.

Burke says state law allows both Democrats and Republicans
to hire observers at polling booths. However, the observers can only
watch, and they can’t challenge voters. Even if the appointed observers see suspicious
activity, they have to leave the voting area and report the activity
through other means.

The tactics adopted by TTV have an ugly history in the U.S.
Utilizing poll watchers was one way Southern officials pushed away
minority voters during the segregation era. By asking questions and
being as obstructive as possible, the poll watchers of the segregation
era intimidated black voters into not voting. In the post-segregation
era, the tactics have continued targeting minority and low-income
voters.

The Senate Democrats make note of the ugly history in their
letter: “It has traditionally focused on the voter registration lists in
minority and low-income precincts, utilizing ‘caging’ techniques to
question registrations. It has included encouraging poll watchers to
‘raise a challenge’ when certain voters tried to vote by brandishing
cameras at polling sites, asking humiliating questions of voters, and
slowing down precinct lines with unnecessary challenges and intimidating
tactics. These acts of intimidation undermine protection of the right
to vote of all citizens.”

TTV has already faced some failures in Hamilton County.
Earlier this year, the group teamed up with the Ohio Voter Integrity Project (VIP),
another Tea Party group, to file 380 challenges to the Hamilton County
Board of Elections. Of the 380 challenges, only 35 remain. The vast
majority were thrown out.

“For the most part, they tried to get a bunch of UC
students challenged because they didn’t have their dormitory rooms on
their voter registration rolls,” Burke says. “All of those were
rejected. We did nothing with those.”

But he said the group did bring up one legitimate
challenge. Some voters were still registered in a now-defunct trailer
park in Harrison, Ohio. Since the trailer park no longer exists,
Burke says no one should be voting from there. The board didn’t purge
those voters from the roll, but the board unanimously agreed to ensure those voters are challenged and sent to the correct polling place if they show up to vote.

Still, TTV insists on hunting down all the phantom
impersonators and fraudulent voters. In partnership with VIP, TTV is continuing its mission to stop all the voter impersonation that isn't actually happening.

VIP is brandishing the effort with a program of its own. That organization is now hosting special
training programs for poll workers. The organization insists
its programs are nonpartisan, but Democrats aren’t buying it.

Burke says it’s normal for Democrats and Republicans to
hire poll workers, but if the Voter Integrity Project program puts the
organization’s anti-fraud politics into the training, it could go too
far.

“The job of the poll worker is to assist voters in getting
their ballots cast correctly,” Burke says. “It’s to be helpful. It’s
not to be belligerent. It’s not to be making voters feel like they’re
doing something evil.”

He added, “If poll workers are
coming in and deciding that they’re going to be aggressive police
officers making everybody feel like they’re engaged in voter fraud and
therefore trying to intimidate voters, that’s absolutely wrong.”